Astrologian Cards Can't Be a Coin Flip: A petition

[Melichoir]

Id kinda like all this complaining to kinda cut it out till the xpac drops and people actually play the classes. To much arm chair theorycrafting about how things will play out without having the context of the environment theyll be in.

Complain when youve had time to play it.

[Melorie]

Id kinda like all this complaining to kinda cut it out till the xpac drops and people actually play the classes. To much arm chair theorycrafting about how things will play out without having the context of the environment theyll be in.

Complain when youve had time to play it.

If you need to play the class to understand that they transformed 6 different buffs into one buff, ok. Most of us can read the tooltips though.
If you play a lot of astrologian this information is more than enough to decide if you like it, hate it or don't see any difference.

[Hash_Browns]

Id kinda like all this complaining to kinda cut it out till the xpac drops and people actually play the classes. To much arm chair theorycrafting about how things will play out without having the context of the environment theyll be in.

Complain when youve had time to play it.

You really don't need to play the 5.0 AST to understand/discuss the changes.

[Ricola]

I’m going to wait until it comes out to see how it plays, but I do have a question for some of the people who are happy with the changes. This isn’t me being sarcastic but i’m legitmately curious; why’d you pick up AST if you don’t like rng? I literally picked up this class because there was a chance for it to be really good, or really bad; i’m curious to the reasons.

[Hash_Browns]

I’m going to wait until it comes out to see how it plays, but I do have a question for some of the people who are happy with the changes. This isn’t me being sarcastic but i’m legitmately curious; why’d you pick up AST if you don’t like rng? I literally picked up this class because there was a chance for it to be really good, or really bad; i’m curious to the reasons.

In most games when I can, I play healers that focus on giving the party lots of buffs rather then damage, that's why I picked up AST. It seemed like the best class currently available for that kind of thing. I started out as a WHM, but quickly found it to be boring in late game dungeons, when I was more then comfortable healing.

The RNG was never a good thing, it was just somethign I had no choice but to have in the class I played.

Since then I have branched out into other classes. I play all 3 healers, Warrior, and Bard. AST will most likely still be my main in ShB though, although am drifting towards tank now, and plan on picking up all of the tanks (PLD before ShB, and DRK & Gunbreaker afterwards.)

[Allegor]

I’m going to wait until it comes out to see how it plays, but I do have a question for some of the people who are happy with the changes. This isn’t me being sarcastic but i’m legitmately curious; why’d you pick up AST if you don’t like rng? I literally picked up this class because there was a chance for it to be really good, or really bad; i’m curious to the reasons.

I'm not one of those happy about the change, but just want to throw my 2 cents; I picked it because not only the gameplay but the theme itself of 'gambling with/defying fate' (aka be at RNG's mercy). Even if the mini game of drawing cards is still there in the form of gathering the 3 seals, the fact all cards are literally the same thing completely kills and nullifies the fun and immersion of the job - they literally stripped it off part of its identity.

[Melichoir]

If you need to play the class to understand that they transformed 6 different buffs into one buff, ok. Most of us can read the tooltips though.
If you play a lot of astrologian this information is more than enough to decide if you like it, hate it or don't see any difference.

A lot of the doom saying boils down to some variation of "The took my cards - ast now boring/,class sucks, and SE is terrible! They hate healers!"



If we want to talk cards, what cards? Someone else pointed out correctly that theres only 3 widely viable cards - Balance, Spear, Arrow. All the other cards are at best flavor cards that are heavily situational and would not be picked over those three unless luck + situation demands they be played. (cant wait for that anecdote about how one time someone got a Ewer and saved the entire day from a wipe and how clutch that ewer was.). With changes to mana and TP, Spire and Ewer become a lot less functional. How Bol would effect things is up for debate. Lord and lady have been repurposed.

So what next? Do they keep Balance, Spear, and Arrow the same? Well then, you pretty much make strong buffs more on demand that were balanced against the RNG factor, cause you know, the current system fully utilizes the fact that there are stronger and weaker cards as a means of balance. If you repurpose Ewer and Spire, then it comes down to the same RNG issues the class had complaints about + balance issues which may shift AST into a must pick category for being so buff heavy. This gets even more complicated cause we dont know how sub stats will play out (again why waiting till the xpac drops matters.)

From a pragmatic stand point, the changes they made make sense. Youre not worrying so much about the overall RNG factor anymore. Cards generally give you a damage buff (that is much easier to balance around btw) no matter what you draw, so you have a consistent net benefit now. And playing those cards on your fellow players will alter a subsequent buff. Youre dealing a lot less with RNG and getting overall better bang for your buck. It's getting balance on every draw now, pretty much. Slightly less powerful (depending who you apply it too) but you get it every pull now, and how good at AST you are is now more dependent on how you apply the card rather than whether you get the right card in the first place.

But this is somehow absolutely terrible? So terrible that people are forgetting that one of the core complaints to AST over the last few years was how RNG the cards were and annoying that was creating inconsistency in performance. That again, the only 3 cards that really mattered were Balance, Spear, and Arrow, and that of those 3 only 1 really was the big cheese.

Yeah, The card system was so good. Not really. Im not arguing that this system is better, but rather all this posturing about how good it is currently vs how good itll be in ShB is the bothersome part. Xpac drops, people play it, dont like it cause its not satisfying when its applied to the content? Fine. Complain to your hearts content. But without that context of the changes, all this is just a lot of hoopla and speculating. Just calm down and let the game come out in a month before going on the crusade that these threads devolve into. Cause frankly, no matter how much people complain, theyre not going to revert changes for ShB until the game drops and they see it in performance. So all the fury and screaming at the heavens is just nonsense.

[Deceptus]

From what I see if you're party has nothing but melee or ranged, half of your deck is sub par.

Is that accurate?

[Callinon]

In most games when I can, I play healers that focus on giving the party lots of buffs rather then damage, that's why I picked up AST. It seemed like the best class currently available for that kind of thing. I started out as a WHM, but quickly found it to be boring in late game dungeons, when I was more then comfortable healing.

The RNG was never a good thing, it was just somethign I had no choice but to have in the class I played.

Since then I have branched out into other classes. I play all 3 healers, Warrior, and Bard. AST will most likely still be my main in ShB though, although am drifting towards tank now, and plan on picking up all of the tanks (PLD before ShB, and DRK & Gunbreaker afterwards.)

What do you think those buffs do though?

They either increase damage directly or enable damage indirectly.

Balance, Arrow, Spear: Damage up, Balance is just better at it
Bole: Tank damage taken down, healer damage up
Spire: Physical AoE damage up, or more likely royal road
Ewer: Legitimately the only use for this beyond royal road is to refresh a healer that just got picked up off the floor.... enabling the rest of the party to keep doing damage

No kidding, I can count the number of times I've actually cast bole, spire, or ewer on a person over the last 4 years on like one hand. Has it come up? Sure. Are these cards more likely to get redrawn or burned for a royal road effect? Absolutely.

Am I thrilled with the changes they've made here? Not really, feels kinda boring and I'd have preferred they'd gone a different way for this. But acting like you had actual choices to make before is blind.

[Hash_Browns]

What do you think those buffs do though?

They either increase damage directly or enable damage indirectly.

Balance, Arrow, Spear: Damage up, Balance is just better at it
Bole: Tank damage taken down, healer damage up
Spire: Physical AoE damage up, or more likely royal road
Ewer: Legitimately the only use for this beyond royal road is to refresh a healer that just got picked up off the floor.... enabling the rest of the party to keep doing damage

No kidding, I can count the number of times I've actually cast bole, spire, or ewer on a person over the last 4 years on like one hand. Has it come up? Sure. Are these cards more likely to get redrawn or burned for a royal road effect? Absolutely.

Am I thrilled with the changes they've made here? Not really, feels kinda boring and I'd have preferred they'd gone a different way for this. But acting like you had actual choices to make before is blind.

By no means am I saying the other card system wasn't more exciting. Hell, I have had times where I needed to res spam, and was drawing specifically for ewer, so I get that. But honestly, I think they just took the AST complaints that were coming in, and streamlined the process more.

Balance always being fished for? Everything is a balance
Accidental playing your card by clicking twice? Now you have a draw and play button

Just seems like they took all the AST complaints to heart, and made some QoL changes that ended up needing to cut the whole system and reworking it.

If they made all the cards different, people would still look for the golden boy, and the system would be exactly the same. That's the core problem.

Balance was the best, because it was the strongest and could always be used. Other cards only came in handy when your party was lacking, and they were very situational.

I will admit that the changes to the card system look boring, however.

From what I see if you're party has nothing but melee or ranged, half of your deck is sub par.

Is that accurate?

I would rather have half my deck be subpar some of the time then 5/6ths of my deck be subpar almost always.